Please check EnglishZoom grammar with listening

[tomtoledo]

For about a year now, I've been refining the design for my website at www.englishzoom.com My plan is to develop a non-commerical site where students can practice listening and develop their skills in grammar at the same time. The activities are content-based; students learn a quirky story and the grammar/listening activities are largely related to that story.

I'd be very interested in getting feedback on the design of the site, especially on the design of activities already with listening, covering adjective clauses and phrasal verbs. Also, please sign the guest map and register on the mailing list.

Thank you!

Tom Sheehan
Toledo, Ohio USA

[Al]

Nice ideas here, and thanks for NOT putting it in an html frameset which knocks out half the available screen. Particularly relevant when some user groups (many Thai computer users, for example) still go for 640*480 as screen default.

One thing you may want to consider. The people who can make best use of this kind of thing are institutions (schools, colleges etc) who have broadband. Trouble is, Real Media have said recently that from very soon, institutions don't get to choose a free version of the player, and instead must cough up a fairly chunky annual license fee. This has been enough to make my institution cancel realPlayer on its current software instal until the legalities get sorted out and (hopefully) a near relative of the status quo ante returns.

Therefore, is there a chance of making alternative versions of the audio for .wmp (Windows Media Player) which, whether you like Microsoft or not, at least ships with the machine and doesn't require you to download extra software?

Cheers, Al

[tomtoledo]

Thanks, Al, for your feedback. I'm not a Windows expert at all; in fact, I'm often surprised how much I can do with so little knowledge. Windows Media Player is on my Dell but it's not the default. (I can't figure out how to make it the default, either.) However, when I give it a URL, for example,

http://www272.pair.com/engzoom/Audio/BRIntro.mp3

it plays the file with no problems. Could you try it out too and let me know?

Maybe I should just let people know that wmp also will play the audio.

Thanks.

Tom

[Al]

That's right, that would do it. (Sorry, had I been more careful I'd have seen you're using mp3 and not Real Player's ram file format, and so spared you a paragraph of my verbiage)

[tomtoledo]

Thanks again, Al. I'm thinking now I should mention on my homepage that WMP works just as well as RealPlayer. That's a good tip. People may not know it's installed on all Windows machines.

Also, I appreciate the comment about the width of the page. I have kept small screens in mind.

Cheers and Thanks --Tom

[tomtoledo]

Thanks again, Al. I'm thinking now I should mention on my homepage that WMP works just as well as RealPlayer. That's a good tip. People may not know it's installed on all Windows machines.

Also, I appreciate the comment about the width of the page. I have kept small screens in mind.

Cheers and Thanks --Tom

[James Trotta]

Well done! I really like the content here, though the layout and colors are not my style. Could you tell me what software you use to condense the sound files?

Also, you might consider putting your navigation on the very top or left of the site. Anyway, I plan to link to your site from mine, http://www.eslgo.com/ if that's OK with you.

Speaking of links, if you care about link popularity, you're probably going to have to start a links page and setting up reciprocal links. Sadly, in the quest for better search engine rankings, many sites care less about providing quality links to help their visitors and more about getting links in return.